Who Do You Know With “Leader’s Block”?

I’m not sure that such a diagnosis exists, but I’d like to explore it anyway! We all know the common expression “writer’s block”. The writer knows what they want to say, but, try as they might, they just can’t put it down into words. They go for a walk, have a cup of coffee,watch a movie but they still can’t gather their thoughts in how they need to craft that all important piece of writing. They hit a brick wall, and sometimes there is no way around it. Often this mental paralysis can last a lot longer than expected.

I believe that the same can apply to leaders in terms of their behaviour.

As a successful leader, it is easy to equate your behaviour with your success. You act and react in a certain way, which brings a certain result. Sometimes, there is indeed a close relationship between the two, but, more often than not, there are many external factors playing their part in influencing success.

This phenomenon means that there is a danger of certain leaders (or actually, anyone, not just leaders) becoming set in their ways, and insistent on their way of doing things because they deeply believe that it is the most effective.

Then something changes. Their success may have been down to a certain trend in the market for example, and when that trend changes everything changes! Their success disappears. They feel lost and confused. They are doing the same things that they always did – why aren’t these methods working anymore? Leadership lesson number one: always be ready to change and never assume that you are the master of your destiny. This simply isn’t the case in an ever-changing world.

Those leaders who are flexible can adapt to the circumstances, change their style and move on in the “new normal” no matter the changes in market conditions. Those leaders who thought that they were bulletproof find it harder to change. This is what I refer to as “Leader’s Block”.

They aren’t able to acknowledge it at first. Then it gradually dawns on them that they might need to change. They may engage a coach to talk it through. If the coach is proficient, they will help them to realise that their behaviour needs to adapt to the circumstances, because sometimes it just won’t work the other way around.

Then the experimenting phase starts. They don’t understand what might work because they have never tried anything different before. At this point, it is well worth taking their team on their “journey”, admitting that things need to change and making it a common goal. There are bound to be mistakes, dead ends and failures – if the team is on board however, changing everyone’s behaviour will be so much easier. Listening throughout the whole process is a vital skill as you would expect. When they have got over their block and are back to being a successful leader, that is not the end.

You should not only adapt your behaviours when the big events happen. You should be open to change at any time, and even the smallest of changes will be appreciated by your team. Get rid of “Leader’s Block”, or you may not be a leader for much longer.